


I Write Crime Serials, Not Tragedies

by wretchen



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-16 13:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3490379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wretchen/pseuds/wretchen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric Tethras has inconvenient emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring Ayla Hawke, a saucy rogue who romanced Anders and never killed him, sent Bethany to the Wardens and supported the mages. Set early in Inqusition, pre-In Your Heart Shall Burn.  
> All my best jokes are in the footnotes, so don't skip them!

The years had aged her.

The seven years’ advantage Varric had on Hawke had seemed so significant when they were first acquainted. She was a slight, reedy woman of twenty-two—a girl, really—with bangs hanging limply in her bright, hard eyes. _Where does that **vanity** come from?_ he’d wondered, noting her threadbare clothes, over-sunned complexion, and the way her sharp nose cut a path through her blunt hair. All this struck a discordant note with Ayla Hawke’s profound self-satisfaction. She was, Varric owned, good with a blade, clever, and sharp-tongued. He wouldn’t have approached her for the Deep Roads expedition had she not been. For all that skill, she was terribly green and just as terribly naive. Yet every glimpse she caught of her own reflection was greeted with a smile. She painted her face. She swaggered. She flirted. She shouted. She teased. She stabbed ( _hard_ ). In short, she embodied all the bluster and overconfidence of young adulthood that a well seasoned man of _twenty-nine_ is prepared to find perfectly ridiculous.

All that had long ago evened out. Hawke, to be sure, had gained competence, but Varric was no longer twenty-nine (thank the Maker) and had lost much of the undue faith in his own. They faced each other now on startlingly even footing—so much so that the two were intolerable to _everyone_ when they were together. Nearly 10 years’ worth of inside jokes and a little ale were enough to make them lose track of all but themselves. They bounced off each other first amiably, then hungrily, as any two souls who have shouldered their way through so much of the world together are likely to do. It was well known that if Hawke and Varric asked you out for a drink together, you ought to expressly decline (1). Not that Varric had time to notice this (2). He was too happy in the diversion of Hawke’s brightened face and laughing eyes, not so hard as they once were.

She’d long ago traded her hunger-borne sickly frame for lean, trim muscle. Her face was now even more sun-browned, marked by constellations of scars and that ridiculous blood-red stripe she painted across her nose when she was really trying to impress people (3). Varric, when he was being honest with himself, had to admit that his middle had grown softer than it once was. He still hefted Bianca with ease, but has to use an eyeglass to clean and oil her more fiddly bits. Ayla had improved in his mind with age, like a fine wine—no, she’d absolutely kill him if he described her in such cliches (4). Still, he worried that he, in contrast, was a flagon of dragon piss grog slowly going off.

Ten years had wrought change, but when had he begun to love her? Owch. _There_ was a line that belonged in _Sundered Lovers of the Stone_ , should he ever finish the damn thing (5). But there it was. He loved her. He was thirty-nine years old and felt it, but Ayla Hawke turned his stomach in knots.

It did not help that Ayla Hawke was his best, oldest, and sassiest friend.

Varric first became aware of it—loving her—when she asked him to cut her hair. Bethany had done it for years, so Hawke looked—not _respectable_ , but presentable enough with her sister around. Though deft with a knife, Hawke certainly had no hand for hairdressing. When Sunshine left for the Wardens, Ayla’s hair alternated between embarrassingly shaggy and startlingly severe. She was afraid, Hawke finally explained to him one night, a sheepish expression plastered on her (slightly inebriated) face, of _barber assassins_ (6). Varric had laughed at her, and laughed long, but he took the razor from her hand. She sat on a chair. He stood on another, evening out the short, choppy layers she couldn’t neaten herself. At first the proximity and emphasis on his shorter stature had been a mite humiliating, especially combined with the persistent and surprising flutter of his heart. But Ayla’s oh-so-rare steadiness soothed him. Five years in, it had become their shared ritual (7), and a delicious excuse to brush his fingers against her skin.

He should have noticed it (loving her) when he realized Hawke was in love with Anders (8). Sleeping with him was one thing. But then she moved him into her _estate_ —and the way her sharp eyes twinkled not only with mirth, but real _belief_ while he chipped away at his ridiculous _Manifesto_ —it was unconscionable. Varric couldn’t swallow it. It was too easy to blanket his jealousy and the weird ache of his heart in “concern for his best friend.” Justified concern! Right? Anders was a mage, and an apostate, and shared his body with a probable demon, and the revolution he (they?) was vying for sounded a little more manic each day. Varric, after all, had known that Anders, _their_ Anders, was slipping away long before Hawke could bear to acknowledge it. It had taken mass murder for her to see that, actually. And even then… _well_.

What was Anders now? Quiet, mostly, at least on those occasions when Varric actually saw the man. Which were seldom. And that was a choice, because Blondie, demonic possession or no demonic possession, had long ago made his blood boil for reasons far more grave than mere romantic rivalry. He could always tell, though, when one of Ayla’s visits had ended in an outburst from the mage. Not many people could read the Champion’s moods, but Varric knew what the tenseness in her shoulders and the bags under her eyes meant. It drove him crazy, but mostly it made him sad.

Privately, he thought Hawke should have killed him when she had the chance. It would have been a mercy, finally freeing Anders _and_ Justice. He’d made this opinion less private exactly once. It had been his and Hawke’s only real fight, and he was not eager to repeat the experience.

Hawke had loved Anders once, but she didn’t love him anymore. Or at least—not as she had. But she _had_ loved him. She’d loved him fiercely. With so few pieces of her life left—with both her parents dead, and her brother, and her uncle so deeply estranged, and her sister severed from her as a Warden, and so many of their old friends gone—Varric couldn’t fault her for clinging so tightly to what Anders had been. Besides, sometimes that Anders appeared: A moment; a smile; a rushed, shame-faced “thank-you” to Hawke for looking out for him over the years. This was enough to keep the woman searching for the mage she’d fallen in love with years ago, though the affection she had for him had all but withered.

Oof. Varric wrote crime serials, not tragedies (9).

Varric had briefly considered pursuing the Inquisitor. Romantically. Or um, he’d briefly considered it the way you sometimes briefly consider or dumping the punch bowl on your head and doing a little jig at a Guild mixer (10). He was sure he could use the distraction, and Finn seemed so ready—not to love him, exactly, but to be loved. She was an alright looking girl, and shorter than him! Surely that was a bonus. But for all her red curls and generous curves and the gap-toothed smile that reminded Varric of Hawke’s, she just couldn’t compare. She was funny, but lacked a certain dry wit. She was cruelly precise with those little daggers, but off the battlefield Finn Cadash had a certain goofiness to her gait and manner that just didn’t ignite his fire. Cadash had none of Ayla’s poise, none of the righteous ferocity Hawke wrapped up in layers upon layers of snark, and yet—ah. Yes. Varric liked the side of her that put him in mind of Hawke as she’d been ten years ago. Finn was stumbling and wide-eyed like a newborn calf, unsure of what to do with this new and unasked for role thrust upon her. She was a kid. Hawke had been much the same once, though less honest about it. Varric almost missed her uncertainty. That was humiliating to admit, even to himself. Besides, it was pure speculation. Finn obviously only had eyes for that ridiculous Qunari mercenary (11). He wasn't about to interfere with _that_ blossoming romance. How thrilling a chapter it would make in his upcoming book on the Inquisitor! (12)

When it seemed like they were about to die—which happened increasingly often as the years rolled by—Varric had this embarrassing habit of telling Ayla what an honor he’d found it to be by her side. She tolerated it with admirable grace. He raised Bianca and hissed (alongside a healthy string of curses) that Ayla Hawke was the only person he wouldn’t mind (13) dying with.

Just yesterday, she laughed and placed two calloused fingers over his mouth before he could get the words out. “I know,” she said. “You’ve told me, oh, a couple times before.” She flashed him first a wink, then a smirk before unsheathing her daggers, but there was the ghost of a real smile there. He drank it in.

She was wrong, of course. He hadn’t told her. Not like he wanted to.

\------------

1: Though for what it’s worth, they’re buying.

2: And Varric had time to notice everything.

3: Just beet juice and lard, by the way.

4: Like wine, she was an acquired taste, given to bitter notes and spending an awful lot of time in taverns.

5: Assuming he could bear to publish it under his own name.

6: This was, after all, Kirkwall.

7: Varric and Hawke once drunkenly decided to shave most of it off. It was a dig at the styles sported by Storm Coast mercenaries and it was going to be hilarious.Shortly after, he found himself prisoner to The Inquisition. He was touched to see she’d kept it so upon their reunion.

8: The relationship as depicted in The Champion of Kirkwall was very flattering to Ayla, and not at all to Anders.

9: This was an obvious lie, but Varric ignored facts that interfered with his idiom on principle.

10: Yes. They have mixers. Mostly so they can pointedly not invite those who have offended them.

11: To be fair, when The Iron Bull was around, it was rather hard to put your eyes anywhere else.

12: Working title: _Our Most Exalted Lady Her Inquisitorialness._ This was not likely to go over well with his editor.

13: Much.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke's dead. Varric is bummed. Life goes on.

And now he never would.

 _“Where’s Hawke?”_ Silence. A repetition: _“Where’s Hawke?”_ The beat that followed, one aching breath too long. The look in the Inquisitor’s eyes, all anguish and apology and an outrageous measure of defensiveness (1). The empty, Hawke-shaped space where no one stood. He knew. From that moment, Varric knew, and the subsequent stream of explanation buzzed incomprehensibly through his ears. One clear thought rose in the fury of his mind. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t felt her go. He’d had to ask.

He’d almost told her—he’d come so close—but the words had died on his tongue.

And she’d died alone (2).

Hell (3).

There had been—there was mourning. Plenty. He’d gotten over blaming Finn right quick; beneath that self-serving facade, Hawke was no coward. She’d had perished in Lothering if she’d been a coward. And she was irritatingly selfless when it mattered; selfless enough to fight Qunari invaders, to take on a Templar army, to abandon her second home in case it might save it. No, Hawke was brave (4) and noble and heroic and occasionally _very, very stupid_. It was just like her to blame herself—for the Wardens, for Corypheus, for _everything_. She had no business getting herself killed, but even Varric had to admit that it was bound to happen eventually. Really, it was a wonder that Ayla had preserved herself past thirty. This wasn’t the Inquisitor’s fault. Nor was it Alistairs, not really—though from what Varric understood, the Warden could have argued for his right to dutiful self-sacrifice a little more strenuously.

Varric had moved onto resenting Ayla Hawke herself in matter of hours (5). He was pissed. But as with any unjust resentment, it fed a wrenching, grief-addled mass heavy in his gut. How dare she die on him? Had it been an accident, sure. Varric wasn’t sure he could so easily forgive Hawke throwing herself in a monster’s path for the good of thousands. Not this time. This time, it had stuck.

She hadn’t even said goodbye.

Of course, the time and effort expended in a farewell would have rather destroyed the point (6), but Varric was a man who felt eternally entitled to his principles. She’d done the most unthinkable— _selfish_ —impulsive—honorable— _agonizing_ thing. Worst of all, she hadn’t done it _at him_. Oh no. It wasn’t about him. It was about everyone, about the whole damn world. It just wasn’t enough for Varric to be part of the great mass of perishable lives she was willing to die for. He didn’t want her to die for him alone, either. He wanted her to live.

They’d known they were going to die. This was not the first time they’d gotten cozy with their own bloody, squishy mortalities before (7), so perhaps that knowledge carried less weight than it ought to have. Still, given the literal hole in the sky dripping monsters, the wacky Grey Warden army to fight and the demons crawling around waiting to snack on a tasty dwarf or two? Of course they’d known. But even the dragon flying around wasn’t even a novel experience (8). He’d known and known well, but how could he have... _known_?

Hawke had known. The harrowing hours leading up to their assault were spent in each other’s company. Varric had begun no more quiet nor sentimental than usual, but his heart was pounding and his mouth was full of unsaid words. She was polite enough not to call him on it:

 _“This is a big one.”_ That smile. Those _eyes_ , deep and laughing and almost as bright as the day he’d met the scrappy rogue all those years ago.

_“This? This is nothing. What’s a possessed Grey Warden army to the likes of us? Typical week.”_

_“And what of the droves of demons hankering to break us to bits and take up residence in our steaming corpses? The spice of life?”_ She laughed, and it had no right to be heaven (9). _“Then there’s Corypheus himself, who by all accounts is good friends with a some kind of...undead dragon?”_

Varric waved his free hand dismissively, speaking only when he’d drained his drink. _“We’ve already practiced killing him. How hard can it be?”_

There was a breath, then a kiss, long and low and wandering and desperate. It was not their first kiss. It was not the first time they had known they were going to die.

  
  


Until her death, Hawke had been indestructible. That was how it worked (10). Varric had loved and lost before, had even loved and lost to horrible, violent death before. Ayla’s death had still been a shock to his system, a sudden plunge into icy rapids, a slap in the face. Queue the metaphor. She shouldn’t have died.

He’d had to write to Anders. It might have been the most awkward letter he’d written to date (11). Worse, he supposed he’d have to see about Anders’s welfare in Hawke’s place. The thought sickened him—no longer jealousy, but real, macabre horror of filling his dead friend’s role. Getting in touch with Hawke’s wider acquaintance had been comparatively more cheerful in a very strange way. Merrill had been devastated, as was to be expected, and replied (at length!) in tones most miserable. Aveline’s letter had been terse and no-nonsense: She’d get the estate in order, find Gamlen, look after Bethany. Varric knew her well enough to read the sorrow in her straightforward soldier’s hand. Fenris hadn’t responded, but Varric found a gross comfort in the knowledge that he was working through his grief with his righteous sword. Isabella didn’t seem to have gotten his letter, but she would. She’d likely even care.

The Inquisition’s reaction had been much less comfortable. They hadn’t known Ayla for long and had never had the chance to love her. During her short stay at Skyhold, she and Varric had whittled away their free time with cards and liquor enough to lose themselves. Finn’s merry band of weirdies, well-meaning though they might have been, saw only a chair that had been filled by Hawke; a mug on the shelf; a chest of clothes no one knew what to do with. Her death was little more than an unfamiliar absence by his side.

Vivienne spared him pitying looks. Bull offered awkward, heavy slaps on the back. Josephine sent him a box of sweets by way of condolence, expensive and neat and a really poor stand-in for the woman he’d lost. Dorian had the audacity to be _kind_ to him. Leliana, struck with some strange belief that she could help, actually tried to _talk_ to him about it. Sara avoided him. Cassandra, perish the thought, was _gentle_. Finn had the sense to hug him, but she did it uncomfortably. Her pangs of guilt and remorse were all too obvious, shuddering through them both during that alien embrace. At least she’d tried. They all tried.

Only Blackwall knew enough to offer him companionable silence. Varric hoped he knew how much it was appreciated (12). Everyone knew the truth. Of course they did. Dwarves couldn’t dream, but at night he found himself picturing her, limp and cold and lifeless, a lone true body in the Fade. No funeral pyre for this displaced Ferelden. He wondered if her spirit walked. He wondered if Hawke was with the Maker. He wondered if she had died knowing how desperately he loved her. He wondered if Finn was being honest when she told him that he had been the last thought to escape Ayla’s lips. Her death had wrecked him and it was written on his face. If only the others could convincingly pretend they didn’t see! (13) Perhaps then he could grow accustomed to the loss.

Varric would heal. Slowly. Patchily. Painfully. The scar Ayla Hawke left in him was like a deformation of his very soul, a harpoon to the spirit, a vein of lyrium growing in his heart—ah. There. He was beginning to wrap his feelings up into the ghastly language of his worst romance novels (14). Surely a writer who begins to write again is a writer who grows stronger.

  
_The Champion of Kirkwall_ might deserve a sequel. One day. Varric wasn’t convinced anyone would read it (15), but he’d write it. No pyre, no gravestone, no memorial. A book. It would have to be enough.

 

* * *

1: Also: Blood!

2:  Unless you’re willing to count the nightmare itself. But it’s really, really bad company.

3:  Literally!

4:  In contrast, Finn was not. Brave, that is. Varric had briefly contemplated titling her their Fearful Leader, but decided it wasn’t funny enough to risk getting kicked in the shins. 

5: With a healthy dose of guilt on the side, and another of whiskey. Actually, several doses of whiskey. Go whiskey.

6: And a lot of others things, too, such as the world.

7: By Varric’s count, it was somewhere from the sixty-seventh to the one hundred and forty-third.

8: Though the puppet hate-dragon spitting darkspawn juice was at least an interesting twist.

9:  It wasn’t even a particularly good joke.

10:  To be fair, most people have fewer opportunities to test it than Ayla did.

11: One supposes it went something like: “Dear Anders! Your girlfriend. Girlfriend? Were you..? Hawke. Is dead. Sorry. You probably are too. Sorry, I mean. Please refrain from killing everyone in response, as I know it your habit.”

12: Varric would later conclude that this was probably just his personality.

13: Her Inquisitorialness had chosen friends with a wide variety of admirable traits. Tact and acting skills were not typically among them.

14: Cassandra would go on to appreciate this.

15: Or, indeed, that anyone would be around to read it, given Thedas’s enduring habit of nearly obliterating all life.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't really planning to write a sequel, but after making the decision to let Hawke die, it felt unfinished. This is probably the last piece I'll write in this style. The meandering non-story is not really my favorite stucture.


End file.
